


the spitting image

by equals_eleven_thirds



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (ouch. lots of ouch there.), Canonical Child Abuse, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, canon-typical bad parenting, martin's father is mentioned lots but not appearing, which is pretty much martin's life so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-23 11:28:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23177413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/equals_eleven_thirds/pseuds/equals_eleven_thirds
Summary: Actually, Martin doesn't look exactly like his father.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood & His Mother
Comments: 9
Kudos: 66





	the spitting image

**Author's Note:**

> why yes i did write this bcos i wanted to write my biracial filipino martin headcanon. and then i made it sad. (him being filipino is not outright stated that's just my headcanon and informs a lot of the physical descriptions)
> 
> (also as an american with horrible healthcare, i'm preeeeeeeeeetty sure britain has better healthcare, but google tells me that eyeglasses at least you have to meet certain requirements AND get a voucher for to get free, which i'm pretending martin's mother didn't know about. also specialized medical treatments i think cost extra money there? i am not certain, pls do not call me out, it's just for angst reasons ok.)

When Martin is eight years old, his father leaves. His mother is sick and struggling with it, but anger gives her enough energy to gather up every single picture of _that man_ in their home and destroy them. She wants no reminders.

Then she wraps her little boy up in her trembling arms (why does she shake? is it weakness or anger or fear?) and looks into his tear-filled brown eyes (like hers) and says, _We don’t need him anyway. You and me, we will take care of ourselves._

And for a time, they do.

When Martin is ten, he hits a growth spurt. He’s not that tall, yet, but he’s taller than his mother. She spends a lot of her time sitting or lying down, trying to rest, conserve her energy, but now even when she stands she has to tilt her head up to look at him. His arms are round (like hers) and strong, and he helps her carry groceries and he stands on his tiptoes to reach higher shelves for her and for a moment she remembers another, even taller man doing the same, easily plucking the wine glasses from the cupboard and bringing them down to her, laughing while she pouts at him.

She shakes it off. This is different. This is not that man. This is her son.

When Martin is twelve, he has to get glasses. He’s needed them for years now, squinting at his textbooks and the prices in the grocery store, but they never quite had the money for the eye doctor, the glasses, the frames. But finally it gets too bad and he needs to be able to see, and she sits one evening over her bills and her dwindling savings and calculates exactly how much they can afford, and then takes him to the doctor and gets the cheapest options (his prescription is already too high and when the doctor says _a checkup every year, they’ll get worse_ she bites her lip and ignores the thought).

The big black frames settle on his flat nose (like hers) and change the angles of his face in a horribly familiar way, and she bites her lip and ignores that too.

When Martin is fourteen, he takes a pair of scissors to his own hair, because her hands are too weak to hold them and his school says it’s too long for the dress code. He cuts it inexpertly, differently than she did, shorter than she did. The back of it is a little patchy, the front too high over his eyebrows. He smiles at her and insists it’s fine, it’ll grow, and he’ll get better at it if he keeps practicing.

His hair is dark (like hers) but somehow he cut part of it just so, and the way it curls over his ear is like the lighter brown, curlier hair she used to brush away from—

_It had better grow,_ she says, peevish. _I can’t have you looking like I don’t take care of you._

She’s too busy looking away to notice his hurt face.

When Martin is sixteen, he’s too busy studying and forgets to shave for a few days. The stubble grows in slowly (he’s still young) but it does grow in, filling under his chin, shadowing the angle of his jaw (the same angle as _that man’s_ jaw). It covers some of his freckles (she has freckles; did that man? it’s been so long) and stands out against his pale skin (paler than hers; he must have gotten it from _him_ ).

She snaps at him: _Shave that off, you look ridiculous._ He jumps and brings a hand to his face, the gesture surprised and familiar, and she wants to smack his hand away. He says he didn’t notice it growing. She scowls at him and goes back to bed; her bones already hurt.

When Martin is seventeen, he goes to the secondhand store and buys an ill-fitting suit. He is going to a job interview, desperate for money to help pay for her treatments and their home and food and bills and everything. When he stands in their badly-lit hallway in front of a dusty mirror and tries to adjust his sleeves, he doesn’t know his mother is looking at the line of his shoulders under the suit jacket, the way the hem of his trousers hangs above the tops of his shoes, and remembering another man in another suit who stood just like that.

She keeps no pictures of her ex-husband. Years ago, she couldn’t bear to look at any reminders of him. Now one lives in her home, feeds her lunch and makes her tea, kisses her forehead before he leaves. She can’t remember anymore exactly what those pictures looked like. But she knows the curve of her son’s jaw, the tilt of his head when he looks down at her, the curl of his hair, the lightness of his skin, the way his eyes squint through year-old glasses. She sees that every day of her miserable, ruined life.

(She doesn’t notice, anymore, the warm brown of his eyes, or the freckles on his round arms, or the flat nose his father never could have had. All she sees are half-faded memories and a hatred which will never fade.)

_He looks just like that man,_ she thinks. _Just like him. I wish I’d never had him._

(And when Martin is thirty, Elias shoves that thought into his mind.)


End file.
